The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

The Pakistan-Taliban nexus

ANY war against terrorism will be incomplete without identifying and destroying the training camps inside Pakistan. There has been a close link between the Pakistan-trained subversives operating in Jammu and Kashmir and Saudi fugitive and terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, enjoying the patronage of the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose men, it is believed, struck terror in the USA on September 11. In fact, the awesome terrorist edifice came up over the years as a result of the Pakistan-Taliban nexus, and this should not be ignored in the US-led campaign against the menace, as rightly pointed out by Home Minister L. K. Advani at the annual training conference of the BSF in New Delhi on Saturday. This has been India's consistent stand. It has collected irrefutable proof, which has been made available to the USA. Pakistan may try to take advantage of being on the side of the superpower, and this is where the danger lies. India must bring to bear on Washington that whatever Islamabad says about the various terrorist outfits, some of them being the ISI's creation, should not be taken at its face value. The time has come for the world to prepare a complete list of these destructive forces so that an effective campaign can be launched against them. Besides destroying their infrastructure, these elements must be brought to justice and punished under international law. The sources of their funding should also be probed and curbed. Nobody should be spared. Whether it is the Government of Pakistan or any other country, the law should be allowed to take its course. Leaders of the USA and the others involved in the war against terrorism should remember that history will never forgive them if they showed any slackness at this stage.

Cross-border terrorism has been bleeding India for over a decade, and all efforts to contain it could not succeed because of the apathy of the world led by the USA. American strategists never took the Indian viewpoint seriously that the menace was acquiring horrible dimensions and could pose a challenge to the very existence of civilised order. India wanted the USA to declare Pakistan a terrorist-exporting state but in vain. India again expressed its resolve to smash Osama bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan but it was prevented by the USA. Either this country's anti-terrorism strategy did not suit American interests or the US administration failed to perceive what India could because of being a victim for long. The Americans have now realised the gravity of the emerging deadly scenario when terrorism has struck at the heart of the superpower. The USA could have escaped the tragedy that visited it on that black Tuesday had it heard India's pleading with the seriousness it deserved! Anyway, it is better late than never. The time has come when nothing should be left to chance in the drive to eliminate the common enemy of mankind.

Carnage in stock markets

LAST week stock markets across the world went into a tailspin. Tokyo’s Nikkei index slid below the psychological barrier of 10,000 points. So was the case with Heng Seng of Hong Kong, which too lost heavily. India cannot be an exception and it was not. The terrorist attack in New York and Washington (the Pentagon) wreaked a havoc on share markets in all countries. The BSE sensex (of 30 top scrips) plummeted from 3150 to less than 2830 with the distinct possibility of settling down at about 2300-2600 in the next few weeks. This is a ridiculous underestimation of the asset values of all companies. As expected, software companies lost heavily, with top drawer Wipro, Infosys and Satyam shedding a lot of financial fat. Even old economy shares like that of Reliance were subjected to a battering. The result is telling in terms of numbers. At one time in the past 52 weeks, the sensex zoomed to 4462, conjuring up images of piercing the 5000 mark. Today it is slightly above half of it. Analysts are pessimistic. The terrorist attack on the nerve centre of the world financial market and the shutdown of all stock exchanges in the USA for four days have sent shock waves, triggering panic and heavy selling. Everyone, particularly managers of huge funds, are exiting from the market and parking their assets in government bonds or gold and Swiss francs. This is a herd mentality to cut losses and flee to safe havens. This is happening in India and with foreign players deserting the stock market in droves, prices can only move in one direction – downwards.

Even before the terrorist attack in New York and Washington, the Dow Jones index of the New York stock exchange had declined below 10,000. That was a reaction to the news that unemployment in the country was about to climb to 5 per cent and consumer spending had flattened, slashing demand for essential items. The American economy is very sensitive to marginal changes and these reflect in the stock market behaviour and interest rates. This is not true in Indian stock markets, which are essentially a speculators’ den. Brokers are roughly divided into bulls and bears – this distinction is flawed because today’s bear may become tomorrow’s bull and vice-versa. This ground reality imparts an urgency and unwanted momentum to price fluctuation in trading floors. Knowledgeable sources are certain that the downward trend will continue for a few days or even a few weeks before share prices hit the rock bottom at which buying becomes an attractive proposition. If the FIIs (foreign institutional investors, or fund managers) become big time buyers, the market will revive. But that is for tomorrow.

OPINION

Indian, US perceptions on terrorism
Learning right lessons from the tragedy
Sunanda K. Datta-Ray

WHEN the shock and horror have abated a little, and grief and anger yielded to calm reflection, the day of infamy when terrorists struck in the USA should prompt a sober reappraisal of American policy, especially in West Asia and in relation to dependent dictatorships like Pakistan’s. Nothing can compensate for the devastation but a reappraisal might ensure that one evil does not compound another.

It was a coincidence, but surely a coincidence pregnant with symbolism, that Israel’s National Security Adviser, Major-Gen Uzi Dayan, was leading a 10-member delegation in New Delhi as the attacks took place. For out of the death and destruction could rise a new strategic equation in South Asia. If this is an opportunity for India to get out of the rut of old moorings, it is no less an opportunity for the USA finally to shed the blinkers of the Cold War.

Indians see the assault on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (heaven alone knows what other mayhem was planned) as a sequel to the bombings that ripped apart Bombay in 1993. As Mr Jaswant Singh remarked sorrowfully, “India has travelled these bylanes and these roads”. Now, India faces two dangers.

Not content with wreaking havoc in Kashmir, Islamic militants have hijacked aircraft and bombed buses and trains elsewhere. They can hit targets anywhere in a country with hostile neighbours, porous borders, disgruntled minorities and poor security. And, however, reassuring Mr Yashwant Sinha might sound, the soaring price of crude can be a severe drain on a country that imports more than 70 million tonnes annually.

The tragedy is that Washington did not take Indian concerns seriously. Not when Mrs Sushma Swaraj warned in 1999 that Osama bin Laden had bracketed India and the USA as the “biggest enemies of Islam” and urged Muslims worldwide to “target” them. Nor even when the Clinton administration’s coordinator for counter-terrorism, Mr Michael Sheehan, told a senate committee that “the centre of anti-American terrorism has moved eastward, from Libya, Syria and Lebanon to South Asia.”

Differences of perception made the US-India joint working group on coordinating anti-terrorist policies, set up in 1999, ineffective. Americans suspected India of only trying to place their friend and protege, Pakistan, in the dock. Indians accused Americans of a blind spot about Islamic terrorism in Kashmir. India now hopes that “hexperience”, as Mr Bumble in Oliver Twist would have said, will force Washington to focus on terrorism in general instead of only on just one man. Surging outrage in America might even allow Washington to develop strategic cooperation with New Delhi without a formal security relationship, possibly on the basis of the draft comprehensive convention against terrorism that the 56th United Nations was scheduled to discuss.

The need arises because, in spite of unrealistic gushing about two open, secular democracies (which has no bearing on realpolitik), New Delhi is still coy about being seen to be tied to Washington’s apron strings.

America’s favour has meant the kiss of death for too many Asian leaders.

Moreover, India wants to preserve the goodwill that it believes it enjoys among nationalistic Arabs and is worried about the sensibilities of millions of poor and uneducated Indian Muslims who might be carried away by fundamentalist propaganda. It does not want them to think of their country leading Samuel Huntington’s apocalyptic crusade against Islam.

Finally, no Indian government dare take public opinion for granted. It’s not just fellow travellers that our rulers must beware of. I was at a birthday dinner at a stately mansion in Alipore on Wednesday when the news came through. Ignoring the band playing old time waltzes and foxtrots, guests, many with sons and daughters in America, clustered round the TV set. Everyone was shocked by the gruesome tragedy, but two sentiments appeared to lace their horror. There was unmistakable admiration for the terrorists’ sheer skill and daring. There was a feeling, too, that a superpower that had blasted Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ravaged Vietnam, pulverized Iraq and pounded Serbia was at last getting a taste of its own medicine. One young man tells me that the American Central Intelligence Agency and Islamic fundamentalist organisations are alike in their commitment and ruthlessness.

Some of this explains why India also keeps its burgeoning friendship with Israel under wraps. There are reports of a $2 billion weapons contract, of Israelis upgrading Indian fighter aircraft, providing sensors and surveillance equipment and training commandos in Kashmir. But officials only admit that Mr Jaswant Singh’s visit to Israel last year resulted in another joint working group (similar to those with the USA, Britain, Canada and Germany) to share intelligence and cooperate against terrorism.

General Dayan was in New Delhi for the group’s third formal meeting. Moving cautiously because of this baggage, Mr Jaswant Singh was quick to assure Washington that India’s concerns are not Pakistan-specific. But Taliban hospitality for Bin Laden is compared with the reportedly lavish lifestyle under Pakistani protection in Karachi of Dawood Ibrahim and the Memon brothers, suspected perpetrators of the Bombay blasts. We have seen pictures of the celebrations in Karachi that greeted the attack and read of the popularity of Bin Laden T-shirts in Peshawar.

Much will depend now on whether Mr George W. Bush turns the screws on General Pervez Musharraf to obtain his cooperation in the war against terrorism or persists with the notion — a relic of the Cold War — that Western interests are best served by succouring Pakistan, no matter how obscurantist, repressive and militaristic it might be. By implication, the USA accepted Islamabad’s definition that terrorism in Kashmir is freedom-fighting, presumably because Americans also agree with the expedient and dangerous thesis that Kashmir is of crucial importance to Pakistan’s identity and existence. If so, Washington might well decide to turn the screws on India over Kashmir as a sop to ensure the General’s help in dealing with Afghanistan.

The USA must also rethink its superpower obligations in West Asia. Support for reactionary feudalisms does not endear it to the Arab masses. Neither does uncritical backing for Israel, as seen at Durban. There is scope for a realistic formula that guarantees both Israel’s security within recognised borders and legitimate Palestinian aspirations for a sovereign homeland, if only Washington would consider it.

Indeed, Tuesday’s holocaust might even be called a reaction to earlier American action. Bin Laden describes “the time when the Americans decided to help the Afghans fight the Russians” as his baptism in revolution. The CIA says it never “controlled” him but certainly knew all about the renegade Saudi tycoon.

He learned two lessons from that conflict. First, the CIA, which financed, armed and trained (through Pakistani intermediaries) the mujahideen, could be turned to his own purpose, especially when it abandoned huge stockpiles of weapons, grenades and rocket launchers. Second, the mujahideen’s victory “cleared from … minds the myth of superpower.” Bin Laden believes that that triumph can be repeated against the remaining superpower, “the American (who) imposes himself on everyone.” He claimed to have learnt that sheer will can destroy even a superpower.

Everything hangs now on whether the USA, too, has learnt anything from tragedy. The craving for vengeance is understandable, but wisdom decrees taking a look at the long term to ensure not the elimination of one Osama bin Laden but prevent the emergence of others like him. That means a superpower whose authority is voluntarily accepted because it stands for peace and justice. Almost the entire world now mourns with the USA in its suffering. But I am not sure whether they are reacting with revulsion to the means employed rather than expressing repugnance for the cause.

Unless Washington can make the adjustment, it will serve no purpose Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee telling us that the world’s oldest and biggest democracies must unite in the face of the common enemy.

MIDDLE

Your most obedient servant
Shriniwas Joshi

The concluding part of an application of a Babu to the superior during the Raj used to be:

I beg to remain, Sir, or I have the honour to be, Sir,

Your most obedient Servant,

Sd./-

The word servant was to start with capital “S”. It was pure humiliation for many and I remember one Mr Durga Dutt who while resigning from service concluded his letter adding “for the last time” before declaring himself the most obedient Servant.

Babu or Baboo actually is still a term of respect attached to a name like the title Master or Mr and is deferentially used with certain persons of distinction. Bhartendu Babu Harishchandra is considered to be the litterateur associated with the revival of Hindi literature in the late 19th century. Babu Rajendra Prasad was the first President of India.

The word Babu started losing its shine when it came in use for “clerks who write in English”. Mr Edmund Burke used to pronounce it as Bah-Booh! Sir A.C. Lyall writes in “The Old Pindaree”:

“But I’d sooner be robbed by a tall man who showed me a yard of steel,

Than be fleeced by a sneaking Baboo, with a peon and badge at his heel.”

Sir H.M. Elliot called Baboos bombastic “enjoying under our Government the highest degree of personal liberty”. Babu, sitting (or working?) in government office, gradually started to be used with a slight savour of disparagement, as characterising a superficially cultivated, but too often effeminate, Indian”.

This reminds me of a story told to me by my uncle that depicts effeminacy of a Babu serving in the Directorate of Medical Services in India, General (now Army) Headquarters, Shimla, in 1940s. The boss was well-decorated Lt Gen W.H. Hamilton and Mukandi Lal was a mere Babu. The General, all of a sudden, decided to undertake an inspection tour of more than 48 military hospitals in Southern Command. It was Saturday, a blessed half-day for officegoers. And there the decision of the General materialised into about four dozen papers to be sent to various hospitals. The papers reached the table of Mukandi who had already fixed a gala whoopee that afternoon — a matinee show starring Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani and then booze with the friends. The papers were dampers for Mukandi. He adopted a shortcut. Instead of preparing about 48 envelopes, writing names of hospitals in all of them and then making so many entries in the despatch register, he made one envelop, wrote “Hdqrs, Southern Command” and dispatched all the papers in one go.

The unwarned arrival of the General in the first hospital bamboozled both the hospital staff and the bigwig visitor. The message of his visit then spread and he was received with the required trumpet call in other hospitals. But throughout he remained hot under the collar. Reaching back at Shimla, he ordered that he wanted to see the bloody face of the Despatch Babu “pretty damned quick”. Mukandi developed jim-jams. He was unable to utter “bo” to goose even. The milksop, deflated Babu could, somehow, drag himself into the chamber of Lt Gen W.H. Hamilton, CB, CIE, CBE, DSO, KHP, IMS. There happened a miracle. The vocal chord of the pale face functioned nonstop: “One mistake today, Sir: no mistake tomorrow, Sir: what I am before your might, Sir: a lace of your shoe, Sir: Pardon, Sir: God bless you, Sir: I beg to remain till retirement, Sir: your most obedient servant with capital S, Sir.” General Hamilton smiled and said, “Get out.”

POINT OF LAW

USA at war but, for once, constitutionally so
Anupam Gupta

Terrorism is war. Not religious, ethnic or national liberation but war. Not a movement for human rights or civil liberties struggling against a callous, authoritarian state but war. Not an outburst of individual anarchy or criminality arrestable by ordinary legal means but war. Neither religiosity nor ethnicity nor nationalism nor humanism nor mere lawlessness but war. Terrorism is war.

It took just one day last week — September 11, 2001; just two hours — from 8.45 am to 10.29 am; and just three buildings — the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York and a part of the Pentagon in Washington DC, for the blindfolds to fall and for the world’s most powerful nation to see for itself, understand and accept the validity of this equation more fundamentally relevant to the making of the modern world than any post-Einstein scientific formula.

The equation, both legal and operational, that terrorism is (or is equal to) war.

An equation that Third World countries like India, breathing rarefied Anglo-Saxon air and living on a controlled, aluminium-foiled diet of human rights jurisprudence, have been unable to understand despite a crippling, exhausting battle against terrorism in different theatres for the last almost 20 years.

Less than a month ago a harried Lal Krishan Advani, blasted all around for daring to suggest an “amnesty” for cops fighting terrorism in Punjab, hastened to clarify that he had actually never used that dirty word.

To the best of my knowledge — and we are just a week away from September 11 — no newspaper in the United States, no judge, jurist, lawyer or civil libertarian, has assailed or even chided President George Bush Jr for using, and using repeatedly, a word that is far more menacing. War.

We are at war, says President Bush, make no mistake about it.

Terrorism is war, make no mistake about it.

My message to everyone who wears the uniform, he said, speaking from Camp David, is that he should get ready. We will do what it takes to win this war.

Had the World Trade Center been in Mumbai and had George Bush been an Indian, he would, I am sure, have said something quite different. And flabby.

This is yet another terrorist (I beg your pardon, militant) attempt, he would have said, to derail the democratic process. My heart goes out to the families of those killed and maimed but we must not succumb to provocation. The Army has been alerted but there must be no adventurist response. That would be playing into the hands of those who want a communal flare-up. The Government is keeping a careful watch on the situation and will take necessary steps to maintain law and order.

But the World Trade Center is (or was) not in Mumbai and George Bush is not an Indian.

“I can hear you,” he told wearied but cheering rescuers in New York last Friday, standing atop the soot-covered debris of the north tower and speaking through a bullhorn or hand-held loudspeaker. “The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”

“There is a desire by the American people (he said the next day at Camp David) not only to seek revenge but to win a war against barbaric behaviour.”

“We’ll find who did it (he added), we’ll smoke them out of their holes. We’ll get them running and we’ll bring them to justice.”

It is not the cowboy diction that is important here nor the familiar exaggeration of US ability to accomplish what it wants — Saddam Hussein is still kicking alive, after all, despite Operation Desert Storm and the decade-long strangulation of Iraq — but the intent and the resolve behind it.

And the willingness to call a spade a spade, law and justice notwithstanding.

Terrorism is war, says the US President, and we are at war with terrorism.

That is not only a metaphor, mind you, and it would be the gravest of legal follies to mistake it to be so.

The Congress shall have power, says Article I, Section 8, of the American Constitution, “to declare War...”

The Congress, that is, and not the President who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces under Article II, Section 2.

Taking the first major step required under the law, the Congress declared war on “international terrorism” on Friday, September 14.

Titled “Authorisation of Use of Military Force”, a joint resolution passed by the US Senate and House of Representatives after a long preambular statement focussing on the “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy” of the USA, provided as follows:

“That the President is authorised to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organisations, or persons he determines planned, authorised, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harboured such organisations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organisations or persons.”

That this is a declaration of war in the fullest legal sense of the term is made clear in the very next recital titled “Specific Statutory Authorisation”.

“(T)he Congress declares,” it reads, “that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorisation within the meaning of Section 5 (b) of the War Powers Resolution.”

Passed on November 7, 1973, over a presidential veto, against the backdrop of President Nixon’s sudden incursion into Cambodia in 1970 and his 1972 “Christmas bombing” of North Vietnam, the War Powers Resolution of the US Congress sought to “fulfil the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and ensure that the collective judgement of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of US Armed Forces into hostilities”.

Section 3 of the Resolution requires the President “in every possible instance” to consult with Congress before introducing the US armed forces into hostilities and to consult “regularly” with Congress thereafter till they are no longer engaged in hostilities or have been removed.

Absent a formal declaration of war, Section 4 requires the President to report to the presiding officers of the two Houses of Congress within 48 hours of the introduction of US armed forces into hostilities or their introduction into the territory, airspace or waters of a foreign nation.

Section 5(b) further obligates him to “terminate” the use of the armed forces within 60 days of such a report. Unless, in the meanwhile, Congress has “declared war or has enacted a specific authorisation for such use of US Armed Forces.”

It is this “specific authorisation” which both Houses of the US Congress jointly resolved to give President George Bush Jr at his request on September 14, empowering him in the process to keep America at war against international terrorism even beyond 60 days.

The historic legal significance of this empowerment lies not only in the fact that it has been sought and granted in advance of US action against Osama bin Laden, marking a comprehensive compliance with the letter and spirit of the War Powers Resolution.

It lies also, and perhaps even more so, in the fact that George Bush Jr is perhaps the first American President to demonstrate such respect for that Resolution, whose roots lie in bitter divisions within the USA over the conduct and pursuit of a partly declared and a partly undeclared war in Southeast Asia in the 1970s.

For whether it was Jimmy Carter’s attempted rescue of American hostages in Iran, or Ronald Reagan’s dispatch of troops to Lebanon and his invasion of Grenada, or George Bush Sr’s attack on Panama, successive US Presidents have in the past simply ignored the War Powers Resolution and made war merrily without Congressional authorisation.

Despite an unambiguous constitutional denial to the President to declare war on his own, a power expressly reserved and reserved exclusively for the US Congress in the fundamental text.

Even the initial introduction of US forces in the Persian Gulf in 1990 — more than two lakhs of them were sent in the first instance, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August, and the number doubled in November — lacked Congressional authorisation; and it was only later in January, 1991, that Operation Desert Storm was formally authorised by Congress.

Whether or not, then, America’s war against Osama bin Laden succeeds, and regardless of the time over which it is conducted, and the means by which it is conducted, its treatment of terrorism as war and declaration of war against terrorism carries per se a significance impossible to miss.

DIVERSITIES — DELHI LETTER

Distinct uneasiness in the air
Humra Quraishi

Though Delhi is normally busy with cultural activities this time, a major programme being Raja Radha Reddy’s ongoing ‘Kutumb Parampara’ festival, there is a distinct uneasiness in the air as speculation is rife here on India's apparent willingness to allow the USA to make use of its bases in case of air strikes against Afghanistan.

Some sections feel if such a situation arises, it could spell disaster, though others are in favour of it. It sent a chill down the spine to hear the other evening former Foreign Secretary M.K. Rasgotra say in a television programme that there should be no thinking twice “if the airports of Chandigarh and Amritsar are to be used as bases by the US”. Almost like inviting the Americans to form a base here in our country for years to come.

Ironically, the two groups most vulnerable in New Delhi are the Americans (a great majority of them are the US Embassy employees and some workers in the MNCs) and the Afghan refugees, hundreds of them being Sikhs. During an interaction with the Sikh refugees from Afghanistan, I was amazed to find that their forefathers had settled down in and around Kabul; they had been comfortably living there for years till Russian intervention, sowing the seeds of turmoil.

Though most of the Afghans who live in Delhi talk of their well -to-do past, they are now reduced to a hand-to-mouth existence. Some of the Sikh families told me about the terrible times they are going through with flourishing business establishments having come to a standstill as they enter the country of their origin with just bare essentials.

With speculation of war, there could be chance of a worse treatment meted out to them. And for the rest of us — who are neither Afghans nor Americans — the prophetic verses of the 16 century French seer and philosopher Nostradamus are proving out to be the ‘hit’ literature of the week. Though Nostradamus died in 566, he is remembered for many of his quatrains and verses which spell doom. After several of his other prophecies turned out to be correct, people have picked up these verses as though matching them with the eerie happenings around. Amazing how even nondescript booksellers in Delhi talk of these verses as though all that we need is words to prove the eerie developments. Here are some of these verses and it wouldn’t take you long to match them with the ongoing events:

Century 1, Quatrain 87

Earth-shaking fire from the center of the Earth.

Will cause the towers around the New City to shake:

Two great rocks for a long time will make war,

And then Arethusa will colour a new river red.

Century 2, Quatrain 89

One day the two great leaders will become friends,

Their great power will be seen to increase:

The new land will be at the height of its power,

To the bloody one the number reported.

Century 4, Quatrain 16

The free city of Liberty made servile,

Made an asylum for corrupt ones and dreamers:

The King changed, to them not so vehement:

From one hundred will become more than a thousand.

Century 5 Quatrain 65

Suddenly arrived, the terror will be great,

The principal players in the affair are hidden away:

And the lady in the hot coals will no longer be in sight,

Thus little by little will the great ones be angered.

Century 6, Quatrain 97

At five and forty degrees, the sky will burn,

Fire approaches the great new city,

Immediately a huge, scattered flame leaps up,

When they want to have verification from the Normans.

SPIRITUAL NUGGETS

A drop of water in the shape of a tear fell from the clouds. The tear fell, and when asked why this weeping, it replied,

“O, I am such a tiny, puny, insignificant thing. I am so small, oh, too small, and the ocean is so big. I weep at my smallness.”

It was told, “weep not, do not confine yourself to name and form only, but look within you; see what you are. Are you not water; and what is the ocean? Is it not water too? Do not look upon yourself as being confined in space and time. Look beyond this space and time, and see your reality.”

You become miserable when you confine yourself within time. Lift yourself above all. Not only are matter and spirit the same, but all are the same.

— Swami Ramatirtha, In Woods of God Realisation, Vol. III. Informal Talks.

*****

To forget your troubles remember God.

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The wealth of a rich man can be stolen or burnt, but the happiness and wisdom of the wise remain.

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Condition your mind and remain cool under all conditions.

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If you give your heart to someone he might break it; give your heart to God and have it strengthened.

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Loneliness comes when one forgets that God is one’s supreme companion.

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Pin all your hopes in God, then you will not be pinned down by any man.

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If there is no filament in a bulb, their is no light; if God is not in your life, there is no life.

— Thought for Today (A Brahmakumari Publication)